


Only Breathing With The Aid Of Denial

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean Winchester Angst, Destiel - Freeform, Fluff, M/M, Shy Dean, cuties the lot of them, excellent wingman sam, srsly it has the winchesters in it what do you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4316691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cas might be ice, and you might be fire, but don't you get it? He melts around you, Dean. He fucking melts."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Breathing With The Aid Of Denial

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I finally decided to write something to the epitome of canon but not canon relationship, Destiel. Thanks for reading!

The first time Castiel heard his name was amid the fiery chaos of battle. Before, his superiors had only told them they were retrieving the Sword, and that was that. Castiel- watching his friends, his brothers and sisters die without knowing what for- felt the tidal wave of emotion he would later classify as doubt. As anger. It was the first time Castiel had hinted at rebellion, and it unnerved his superiors- Castiel was the leader of the first garrison, and better than most in combat. Rather than risk his desertion, his superiors shouted the name throughout Hell- and the effect was startling. 

To Castiel, Dean Winchester's name was like music. The syllables blended together in a symphony, a rising crescendo of emotion. It was like an open window, and the name seemed to wake the Angels, allow them to continue to fight. Castiel turned to look at Zachariah, an unspoken sentence hanging from his lips like a tired cigar. 

"Find him."

Castiel went, and if this was the start, then he fell in love with the echo of Dean Winchester around Hell before anything else. 

**XxX**

When Dean Winchester first heard the name of the unknown being that pulled him from Hell, his first thought was to kill it. Castiel sounded like a live orchestra playing the Jaws theme song. Castiel sounded like badly written horror fiction, something that made your skin prickle. But at the same time, Castiel felt like a breeze on his face, the name made his soul dance. Whatever it was, Dean knew that Castiel was someone- or something- who should not be let loose on the world. 

**XxX**

The fact that Dean had not been smited  by Castiel yet was testament to the fact that he was infinitely more patient than the other Angels. Dean felt almost bad for comparing this socially awkward thing to the Jaws theme song. He should've given that title to Zachariah, who seemed to lower the temperature of every room he was in and had to choose the creepiest old man as his vessel. 

As Dean watched Cas out of the corner of his eyes, the quiet Angel with eyes like water and a voice with less warmth than an avalanche, Dean came to the conclusion that if he was fire then Castiel was ice, and that they were as opposite as night and day. 

Castiel looks up and turns to him with the curious detachment that seemed to follow him around, and says, "why do you dislike everything?"

Dean starts and nearly crashes the Impala into a nearby Volkswagen. "Dislike everything? I don't dislike everything, Cas."

Cas shrugs, a clumsy shake of his shoulders so human it seems to physically hurt Dean. "Then what do you like?"

Dean speeds up, despite the fact that he was already 5 above the speed limit. He found it worrying he had nothing much to reply Cas with. "Sex and booze, I suppose."

Cas looks at him again, the soul-piercing look that has Dean shivering. "That sounds lonely."

Dean tilts his head at that, braking at a red light and turning to give Cas a rude gesture that speaks volumes. Cas sighs and folds in arms across his chest. "You are insufferable."

Dean laughs, and it's not a light one, it's filled with self-loathing and anger, and it stirs Castiel somewhere between his heart and his right lung. "Cas- I'm fire and you're ice, and we just don't go together, you know that."

Castiel leans forward and drums the dashboard with his fingers in a distinct rhythm- something he learned, consciously or subconsciously from Dean. "Fire and ice burn the same way."

Dean frowns, turning hard to get off the highway- he was just about to miss it. "What do you mean?"

Cas stares into the headlights of an approaching truck, which illuminates his eyes in a brilliant blue. "You put your hand into a fire- it hurts and it burns your skin. That you know. But if you clench your palms around an ice cube- it numbs and it burns in a way that is almost similar to fire. It becomes unbearable after a while- and lingers even after the ice has melted. Fire and ice burn the same way, Dean. They have the same song."

Dean blinks, turning to look at Cas with why he hoped was a judgmental look but probably was one of amazement, but there was the rustle of wind that signified the teleportation of angels, and Cas was gone.

**XxX**

Zachariah corners Dean in a church- where he should really be hunting down the ghost plaguing the petitioners, instead of worrying about the fact that he's the Sword of Michael and all that jazz. He promises to kill Sam in terrible ways if Dean doesn't agree- he promises to cripple Bobby's mind and to burn the world where he stood if Dean doesn't say yes. 

He shows him visions of the future, where the world was bleak and lifeless- worlds where Cas featured prominently, always in some stage of depression, resignation, or even death. In which Sam had always said "yes", in which the world had come to pieces and it was all his fault. 

Dean comes back from a particularly bad one with tears in his eyes, and he hurriedly blinks them away, but not fast enough. 

Zachariah raises an eyebrow at Dean and makes a low disapproving sound. "You are a sword," he says, "and swords do not weep."

Dean's whole body bristles at that, and he gives Zachariah a good sock on the jaw, which startled the Angel long enough to flee, running away as fast has his legs could carry him. Surprisingly, Zachariah doesn't come after him. 

It is a miracle Dean is alive right now. To tell the truth, he is only breathing with the aid of denial, the thought that there is always another way out. Always.

**XxX**

"Dean- I want to try out some of the recipes in this books, but we don't have the ingredients," his voice is morose, and Dean looks up from his Angel Lore book to Cas' patented puppy dog eyes. 

Dean almost flinches from the lack of distance between Cas' lips and his own. He would say he was used to the things Cas does that doesn't fit in with his culture, (like personal fucking space), but he isn't, the main reason being Cas being goddamn gorgeous, and the only thing stopping Dean from jumping his bones was the notion that Jimmy Novak was somewhere in that brain of Cas', and he didn't need anything else to break him. 

"We can go down to the store to get some," Dean says, keeping a straight face as he puts the book on the table and does a quick sore-muscle shuffle out of the chair. "I'm not sure how much you can find in a tiny store in North Dakota, though."

"Are your limbs still hurting?" Castiel asks, and Dean shrugs. 

"It's gotten quit addictive, actually. I kinda like the hurt," Dean replies honestly, stretching as far as he could before turning to grab his jacket. "I'll go with you to the store. You probably don't even know what half the things on your list are."

Castiel frowns as he follows him, shrugging on his trenchcoat and opening the door. "I know the mechanics of it- but I do not know where you keep it."

Dean laughs as he's hit with a blast of cold autumn air, and he forces his way through it. Castiel opts to stop the wind completely, which Dean finds wholly unfair. 

Halfway down the street, Dean spies a flower that looks like a purple daisy, and he bends down- on impulse, he would swear later- and plucks it. He offers it to Cas with a nonchalant "what's this one called, mister I speak all languages of the world?

Castiel takes the flower with only a slight hesitation, and turns it over in his fingers while they walk. "It's a New England Aster, or symphyotrichum novae-angliae. It's native to this part in the land."

Dean looks at Castiel, not believing his ears. "You're serious."

"I'm always serious."

"That's not what I- okay, what does it mean?" Dean challenges, and he can almost see the challenge flitting through Cas, turning him ram rod straight.  

"Good luck, patience and love," Castiel says nonchalantly, pretending that his breath didn't hitch on love or that he wasn't treating the flower with a gentleness that almost defied reason. "You humans are funny. You cut and kill flowers because you think they're beautiful, but you cut and kill yourselves because you think you are not."

Dean nods, now wishing he didn't give Cas the flower- he doesn't have anything to say to the last bit. "Okay- Cas, you're one smart angel. Doesn't mean you're right though- I'm googling all this shit when I get back."

Cas shrugs, a gesture he seems almost fond of, and they reach a sharp incline. They climb the hill together, and when they reach the top, they stop and take in the view. 

Below them, to one side, is farmland, with only a dilapidated barn and no houses for miles and miles. and it's coated with dying grass and a few autumn flowers and quickly dying trees that Castiel could probably identify if Dean wanted to know. He didn't, but he continued looking at the farmland, feeling his skin prickle like someone walked over his grave (and he actually knows what that feels like, thank you). 

He shivers, causing Cas to look over at what he was looking at, and, all of a sudden, the empty land suddenly began furiously sprouting those purple flowers, the New England Asters, and as Dean watches with growing horror, the flowers spread like a contagion to cover the whole field. 

He looks at Castiel helplessly, who looks down at his shoes. "I didn't want to tell you," he starts, still twiddling the flower in his hands. Dean has to physically restrain himself from pulling the flower out of Cas' hands and ripping it to shreds. "It's other name is the Michaelmas flower."

If Dean returns that night and burns the flowers to the ground with his blowtorch until the place is ashes and he's surrounded by swirling fire, it's nobody's business. If the locals claim that Rosewood Fields is haunted by a figure of red flame, and it burns the place if you get too near, it's none of their business. And if Sam once requests to check out the haunting and Dean staunchly refuses, well, he can neither confirm nor deny anything. 

**XxX**

It only takes a week after realising he's in love with Castiel that Dean starts to hate feelings. He hates it. He hates every rush of his blood when Castiel touches him, he hates the nights where he wonders what Castiel would taste like before falling asleep and dreaming of nothing, he hates saying "things are better this way", just to convince himself that he absolutely should not jump Castiel's bones when he stands too close to Dean, close enough to touch. 

Castiel smells like a storm. He smells like dust after rain, the chill that burns your lungs, and the burn in the air after a lightning bolt. It doesn't sound particularly pleasant, but something about it makes Dean's spine tingle. Something about having that immense power just compacted into tiny Castiel made Dean's head swirl with excitement and nerves. 

He knows that Jimmy Novak is dead- at least his consciousness is, because after Castiel comes back from the dead slightly more dazed and missing his voice of reason, Dean asked. 

After Castiel walks around the house shirtless, Dean physically wrestles all his feelings into a coffin, salts it and then burns it, before throwing the ashes into a volcano. He absolutely refuses to get into a relationship with an immortal Angel. (The very fact that he was  _immortal_  was reason enough to stay away from him.). If anything, his saving grace was his poker face, which he spent years with John perfecting. So when Castiel teleports to him in the shower, Dean is exceptionally calm for someone who is getting half-hard behind a flimsy towel. 

He calmly tells Castiel that he has to leave, he even leaves out the swear words- though that probably was what tipped Cas off that he'd done something not "acceptable", and he left faster than Dean imagined he would. 

Dean swirls around and punches the wall- and it hurts surprisingly less than Dean imagined it would. It only hurt for about a few seconds, and then fades. He bristles and punches the wall again and again, until his hand was turning red and he wasn't sure if he could keep it up anymore. 

By that time, Dean's boner was gone and he could concentrate on what he was doing- showering and breathing through the dull throb of his knuckles. 

**XxX**

Dean drinks himself to death that night, downing bottle after bottle of beer, and when he'd finished that, skipped wine and went straight for scotch. Sam comes down after Dean walks right into a table he swears wasn't there this morning, and finds Dean in a state he would liken to out of his goddamned mind. 

"Dean. Dean!" He yells, shaking his older brother by the shoulders, and Dean responds by blinking at him blearily. "Dean, what are you doing?"

"Drinking," Dean replies, but to Sam it sounds like a mess of words, and it's only because Sam has become fluent in inebriated Dean that he's able to make sense of it. 

"Why?" Sam counts it as a small (or large) mercy that Dean is a truthful drunk. Get a few beers into him and he's spilling his head, unless the words are tied to certain trigger points, like Michael and Hell. He isn't one of those drunks who get sadder and bitterer with every drink they down until they pass out. Hell, if he was, Sam wasn't sure if he would even survive a day with that much angst and testosterone flying around the house. 

"I wanna kiss Caas and it's bad Sam, baad," Dean says plaintively, like a small child telling his father that his homework was bad. "I don't wike it."

Sam needs to go collect the bet he made with Bobby because he so called it. "How is that bad? Just tell him, you big doof."

Dean hits him with a lazy hand. "Noo, Cas is an Angel Sammy, and Angels don't fall in love," Dean sways on his feet, and if Sam knows anything, it's his brother, and the fact that he's this drunk shows that he's probably had the entire of the alcohol cabinet to drink. "Now you listen here Sammy, don't go falling in love with Angels, because-" Dean trips and Sam barely manages to pull him upright. 

"Because?"

"Because they are immortal…they live forever!" Dean punctuates every word with a self-loathing grimace and a finger to Sam's chest. "Cas is ice and I'm firreee, and I hate him."

Sam laughs deliriously at that, and the shock of it is enough to sober Dean up a little. Dean looks up at his brother with an expression that practically screams, "fight me!"

"What's so funny?" Dean still trips over his words. "Don't laugh at me, Saammy. Don’t be mean."

Sam holds Dean's shoulders again and forces him to look at him in the eyes. "You're right Dean. Cas is ice, and you are fire-"

Dean sighs though his nose and punches Sam in the gut, (which he totally expected), and Sam calmly steps backwards. "No! You listen here Dean! Castiel might be ice and you might be fire, but around you he melts, Dean. He fucking  _melts_."

The words hit Dean like a steam engine, and Dean stands there in the hallway for a full ten minutes before moving silently to the living room and passing out on the couch, but when he wakes up the next morning all he remembers is those few lines. 

_Cas is ice and you are fire, but around you he melts._

**XxX**

 Dean had everything planned. When he was going to tell Cas, what time, what setting, hell, he even had the weather down. 

They were to going to Pennsylvania on a "hunt", but actually, it was just so that Dean, who was ever the romantic, could take Cas to see the Susquehannock State Forest. Apparently, in the protected forest, there is so little light pollution that the Milky Way makes a shadow. As in- you can see it for on Earth, and how fucking cool is that? Even if Dean didn't have the guts for it, he would still love to see the stars, so sue him. 

As the Impala cruises along the highway, Sam in the shotgun and Cas in the back (who for some reason, did not want to teleport), Dean feels his heartbeat go batshit crazy, and he almost swerves when he realised just what he was going to do. 

He's going to tell Castiel, an Angel of the Lord, a Seraphim and the Angel of Thursday, that he like-liked him. 

He, a lowly human...thing, the only few titles to his name being Winchester, I Survived Hell and All I Got Was A Stupid Angel, I Am Potentially The Brother Of  Satan and Sword of Michael, none of which he liked very much. 

He was so fucked. After all, what were Sammy and him?

Castiel sits in the back and watches the two smart little boys who grew up heroes. Their childhood might have spat back out the monsters before him, but it seemed that the cracks in their souls made them even more perfect. 

But to Dean, the two people in the front were two little boys who grew up freaks, and their lines in their souls made it obvious that they could not be put back together again, so fuck you Humpty Dumpty. 

Dean would love to say that his story has a happy ending. That he would get to keep Cas forever until he died, that the Apocalypse was averted without loss of life, that Sam was able to say no. He would really, really love to say it. But his picture is on the back of beer bottles and Armageddon, and he doesn't see any way this story can turn out fine.

**XxX**

_5 weeks and a chickened out date later..._

There is a loud sound that echoes around the room, and Castiel bolts upright in a flurry of pyjamas and messy hair.  Castiel squints through the darkness, even though it isn’t really necessary, because of his angel abilities, but his vessel does it anyway. Sometimes he thinks that Jimmy Novak had made more of an impact on him than anyone else would, because Jimmy Novak was strong and a good father, and he loved with all his heart. Basically, Jimmy Novak was everything Castiel ever wanted in his family. Shame, how life never gives you what you want.

He notices a light on in the kitchen and quietly slips into the kitchen, and finds Dean trying to drown himself in alcohol and spirits. Castiel wrinkles his nose; he has not yet figured out why humans have such an affinity for drinks that destroy them from the inside out, but he approaches Dean with all the caution of one approaching a live tiger. “Dean?”

Dean looks up and his eyes focus on a point above Castiel’s head. “Dad?”

Castiel shakes his head as he slides into a chair opposite him. “No. I am Castiel.”

The name Castiel seems to electrocute Dean, and at once Dean is alive and responding. “Shouldn’t you be asleep, Cas?”

“I woke up. Angels do not need to sleep as long as humans. We are able to function perfectly on-” He stops talking when Dean gives him the stinkeye. “You should be the one asleep, Dean.”

“I was going to,” Dean says, his words slurring. Castiel nods, but he does not for a second believe what he had said. “I was a hundred percent going to, Cas.”

“Of course you were, Dean. Do you need me to remove the alcohol from your system?” Castiel asks, already getting out of the chair. Contrary to popular belief, Castiel knows exactly when he is not wanted, and he does not need his minor psychic senses to read the waves of hatred and anger rolling off Dean.

“No. I am fine,” Dean says, his words still slurred as he tries to rise from the chair. “I am very fine.”

Castiel was already at the doorframe when a series of words were strung together into a sentence half of him hoped was a reference to something he would not understand and the other half desperately wishing it meant what he thought it meant.

“Kiss me,” Dean says as he fiddles with his hands. “I’m lonely.”

Castiel turns to look at Dean with a face of abject astonishment “Dean?”

Dean shrugs and rolls his shoulders, shoulders that Castiel was extremely fond of. “Kiss me.”

Castiel’s whole body yearns for it, yearns to feel the taste of Dean on his lips and feel the body beneath his, but he stills himself and says, “I refuse to take advantage of you when you are inebriated. In the morning, when you are in control again, perhaps I will consider it.”

Dean gapes at him before mumbling something that sounded like okay, and fuck you. He marches up to Castiel a moment later and forces Castiel’s hand onto his forehead. “Clear my system.”

Castiel blinks at him before releasing a small puff of grace, and at once Dean’s words are coherent and his eyes are bright. Dean gasps and sags against Castiel, who dutifully tucks him into bed. Dean sits in his bed for a moment before jerking back upright. “Kiss me.”

Castiel actually falls out of the single bed opposite Dean’s, but he is on his feet within seconds, the tips of his ears red. “Dean.”

“Kiss me,” Dean repeats, and Castiel feels a mixture of apprehension, nerves, and a sudden desire to leap off towers screaming, “AMEN!

Castiel walks over, ever the calm soldier, and touches his forehead to Dean’s. He is glad, in that moment, that Dean decided for Sam to have the separate room. Dean is warm, so warm he is almost burning, and his calloused hands reach to cup Castiel’s face. It is a moment of quiet wanting, and Castiel feels almost at peace.

**XxX**

Castiel tastes like peppermint tea.


End file.
